Valentine's Day: Price gouging by the flower cartel

At S.F. Flower Mart, everything's coming up roses - with big buys, high prices the hallmarks of the holiday

Updated 10:50 pm, Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle

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As Feb. 14 approaches, the S.F. Flower Mart is awash in roses of various hues, but especially red roses, which most commonly hail from Ecuador and Colombia. As for the price - expect to pay double for every stem. less

As Feb. 14 approaches, the S.F. Flower Mart is awash in roses of various hues, but especially red roses, which most commonly hail from Ecuador and Colombia. As for the price - expect to pay double for every ... more

Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle

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Ubaldo Rodriguez picks through the red roses to beautify them even more before bundling them to sell at the Neve Roses vender stand, Monday, February 10, 2014, at the San Francisco Flower Mart in San Francisco, Calif. Despite that most younger women prefer colorful roses or flowers the men in their lives believe they want red roses for Valentines. less

Ubaldo Rodriguez picks through the red roses to beautify them even more before bundling them to sell at the Neve Roses vender stand, Monday, February 10, 2014, at the San Francisco Flower Mart in San ... more

Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle

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Kwang Kim of Balboa Green Garden Florist looks over the roses as he shops from the Flower Galore vender stand at the San Francisco Flower Mart, Monday, February 10, 2014, in San Francisco, Calif. Despite that most younger women prefer colorful roses or flowers the men in their lives believe they want red roses for Valentines. less

Kwang Kim of Balboa Green Garden Florist looks over the roses as he shops from the Flower Galore vender stand at the San Francisco Flower Mart, Monday, February 10, 2014, in San Francisco, Calif. Despite that ... more

Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle

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Fortunato Rodriguez picks through red roses as he bundles them to sell at the Neve Roses stall.

Fortunato Rodriguez picks through red roses as he bundles them to sell at the Neve Roses stall.

Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle

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Kim loads up his florist van after shopping at the mart in preparation for Valentine's Day and its increased orders.

Kim loads up his florist van after shopping at the mart in preparation for Valentine's Day and its increased orders.

Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle

Valentine's Day: Price gouging by the flower cartel

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A rose costs twice as much this week as it did last week. Nobody said love was easy to figure out.

Neither is Valentine's Day, the annual rite of true love and how many blooms it will take before your sweetheart gives it to you. The blooms are already here, down on Sixth Street, where the San Francisco Flower Mart could pass for the floor of the stock exchange. It's not just red roses, the linchpin of the love trade, but hydrangeas and chrysanthemums and countless other flowers that few smitten young boyfriends can spell.

There is buying, selling, shouting and screaming as hundreds of thousands of cut flowers pass from wholesaler to retailer. And there is price gouging, too, as the international flower cartel pulls its annual Valentine's Day fast one. "It's the law of supply and demand, in action," said Bob Otsuka, the general manager of the market, who sees the same thing happen every year as Feb. 14 draws near. Rose growers, aware of the perishable nature of the product and the equally perishable demand - no one wants a red rose on Feb. 15 - double the rose prices.

Fleming Jorgensen, who has been wholesaling flowers for decades in one of the mart's 50 stalls, says most red roses these days arrive by plane from South America, primarily from Ecuador and Colombia. A red rose that wholesales for a buck typically fetches $2 during the second week of February. That's why a dozen roses, arranged in a fancy vase at a high-end florist, go for $100 or more. It's the annual love shakedown.

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Pay extra for red

"Florists are artists, and they are working with a live, perishable canvas," Jorgensen said. "And the typical customer is a young man who wants to get lucky. He will do anything."

Rose importer Jon Gomez, like much of the flower mart crowd, wears a heavy jacket to work, all year round. Much of the day is spent inside 36-degree refrigerators, where the roses like to hang out after the long plane ride north.

Not only does the wholesale price jump in mid-February, he said, but a red rose gets bumped up an extra 25 percent over the price of similar roses of other colors.

In a normal week, Gomez might move 100 rose boxes, each with 250 stems. (In the trade, a flower is called a stem, freeing all parties from sentiment.) But during Valentine's week, he moves 600 boxes.

Rose brokers who sell to traditional florists warn ardent young lovers against the bargain online rose. That $19.95 bunch of roses touted on the radio and Internet, Gomez said, is going to break hearts - and not in a good way.

"At that price, you're going to get crap," Gomez said. "Small flowers. Flowers on their last day. Flowers that have been sitting around too long. There is a tremendous amount of junk flowers on the market. You have to be careful out there."

Red rose, blue lady

The red rose, for its high pedigree and price point, may be more a harbinger of spring than of the future. Many women prefer other flowers, according to flower mart marketing director Jeanne Boes.

"Younger women want something besides what Mom and Grandma got for Valentine's Day," she said. "And the poor men, they just buy roses because they think women expect roses. Not all women do. We're all different."

A flower is unlike other love tokens, such as jewelry or chocolate, which last longer. A flower, said fourth-generation San Francisco florist Harold Hoogasian, is "God's gift to man, to help him appreciate the brevity of life."

For florists, the good part is that customers must keep appreciating it on an ongoing basis, flowers being flowers.

Petal pushers

Alas, Hoogasian said, he cannot sell a dozen roses for less than $100. He will not sell crummy roses, he said. Most of the year, Hoogasian throws a couple of extra roses into the bouquet. A baker's dozen may be 13 bagels, but a florist's dozen is 14 roses - on any day except Valentine's. On that day, Hoogasian said, you only get 12. With the jacked-up wholesale prices and all his staff on overtime, he can't afford to be a bleeding heart.

There is nothing sentimental about a red rose when you are moving thousands of them. Hoogasian and the brokers do not traffic in flowers. They move "product" at "price points." And the flower mart, unlike much of Sixth Street just outside the door, is not down on its luck. To step inside is to leave behind the grit and gray of San Francisco's most forlorn byway and cross over the rainbow to Oz. Color oozes like oil paint from tubes and the pathways between the flower stalls smell like the Macy's perfume department. Not all cut flowers have scents, but enough do to make a well-tuned nose happy. But this week especially, no one has time to stand around and sniff. At one stall, where a dozen young women were frantically arranging cut flowers into bouquets, large signs hung all about reading, "Valentine Work in Progress. Please Do Not Disturb Staff."

It's the Farm Girl Flowers stall, where head farm girl Christina Stembel said Valentine's Day is hard on everyone. She normally sells a bouquet for as little as $30, but on Valentine's Day her cheapest bouquet is $70.

Plus delivery. Everything in the world of flowers is "plus delivery." Nobody, say the purveyors of floral product, makes it through Valentine's Day without a smooch or a delivery charge.

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